In this Bloomberg Law article, ethics attorneys—including Bruce Green, director of the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law—agree that the incoming Justice Department chief of staff and his federal judge wife will need to steer clear of each other’s overlapping matters to avoid ethical conflicts.
Kathryn Mizelle will be required ethically to recuse herself from cases related to policies where her husband was involved, while Chad Mizelle must refrain from discussing ongoing Justice Department matters in his wife’s courtroom, ethics experts said.
If Mizelle is “closely involved” with a policy being challenged in court, the judge may need to recuse herself under the judiciary’s standards, said Bruce Green, director of the Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law School.
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Green also said that the “mere fact” that Mizelle would have a supervisory role at the department doesn’t mean he’s in charge of cases in the federal courts, he said.
Under the judicial canons of ethics, judges should disqualify themselves from hearing cases where their spouses are a party, attorney or material witness in the litigation, or where the spouses “have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”
Read “Mizelles Must Navigate Ethics of Dual Trump Appointed Roles” in Bloomberg Law.
